Mick Gidley writes: The first time I saw Paul Oliver (obituary, 9 September) was in London in the mid-1960s. It was his manner as much as the content of his talk that struck me. He often ran his hand through his hair, or tugged at his beard as if to encourage thought; with no notes, he used the records he played as prompts – putting them on the turntable himself, plucked from a pile in a seemingly just-decided way. He offered case studies from blues history, both for their intrinsic interest and because they illuminated social developments, such as the strange career of Jim Crow or the migration of African American people from the south to northern cities.

In the late 70s and through the 80s, during my time chairing American and Commonwealth arts at the University of Exeter – where, with Paul’s help, my colleague David Horn built an outstanding collection of blues recordings – I was privileged to hear Paul’s voice often. It was authoritative, but always informal and apparently effortless as he addressed topics from a range of his interests, not only music but American painting, architecture and folklore. His approach hardly varied, whether the audience consisted of students, specialist scholars, or international visitors – and it always worked.

John Glenister writes: I was at the Harrow county school for boys in the late 40s when Paul Oliver was the art master. But my lasting memory of Paul is his starting an after-school jazz club for interested students. His enthusiasm and knowledge for the music fired my lifelong love of jazz.

We sat in the music room with dour portraits of Beethoven, Bach and Chopin looking down with apparent disapproval as the strident, plaintive tones of Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter filled the air.

Paul Oliver obituary

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Giles Oakley writes: I was one of the huge number of people inspired by Paul Oliver to discover the blues. Set the task in 1962 of reviewing at length any book of my choice from the library at Berkhamsted school, I found his amazing Blues Fell This Morning and was instantly gripped.

The book set the blues in an extraordinarily rich social context. He introduced readers to a multitude of obscure singers with romantically colourful names – Barbecue Bob, Stovepipe No 1, Sleepy John Estes – and I was hooked.

In 1976, I helped produce The Devil’s Music for BBC1, a five-part series on the history of the blues, for which I wrote the accompanying book. I approached Paul for some of his superb original photos (many used in his The Story of the Blues). He was less than enthusiastic on the phone at the prospect of yet another request for help, saying he had had to do the leg work to assemble his collection and I should do the same. I told him how I had been inspired by his books and wanted to share what I had learned from him. After a pause, he gave out an indulgent laugh as he melted. Thereafter he couldn’t have been more helpful.